skir0987
0
- Joined
- Nov 26, 2011
- Messages
- 86
- Points
- 8
I first saw the Maglite Solitare flashlight in Walmart and thought that it would be a nice, compact, small laser host. So, I picked one up and over the past few weeks have turned it into this nice ~300mW red laser. It's run by 1x10440 battery, so not much battery life, but I can carry spares, and long battery life wasn't the point of this build. I had to modify almost every piece.
I started by dremeling out the front section where the lens and bulb used to be. I decided to use an aixiz module, which was just about as wide as the host. I filed down the aixiz module with a tool-sharpening spinning grindstone and made a nice press-fit.
I decided to use a 10440 AAA-sized battery, but found that it would be extremely tight for space with a flexdrive. I accidentally burnt out the first flexdrive I ordered by running 18 volts through it, and managed to kill the second too, but the third finally works at ~455mA. I also killed five LPC-826's trying to finish this build... the last of which is the one currently in the laser, which burnt out a couple of hours ago :yabbem: I guess I'll just have to get another. It's easy enough to replace.
I modified the tail cap to have a momentary switch. I tried to bore out the whole thing with a drill press the first time, but ended up splitting the tail cap in two. So, I got another solitaire and dremeled out a small area for the switch. It's a tiny switch from Radioshack, the same found on many of the green chinese modules, only with an long button. I had to glue some extensions to the button to make it stick out the back of the tail cap.
This laser measures ~0.5in by 3.5in, so it's quite small. Not bad for a first fully custom build
Pictures:
This is the modified tailcap:
You can see how tight for space it is:
Unfortunately I have no beamshots right now because the diode is dead... but I can assure you it works well
Shep
I started by dremeling out the front section where the lens and bulb used to be. I decided to use an aixiz module, which was just about as wide as the host. I filed down the aixiz module with a tool-sharpening spinning grindstone and made a nice press-fit.
I decided to use a 10440 AAA-sized battery, but found that it would be extremely tight for space with a flexdrive. I accidentally burnt out the first flexdrive I ordered by running 18 volts through it, and managed to kill the second too, but the third finally works at ~455mA. I also killed five LPC-826's trying to finish this build... the last of which is the one currently in the laser, which burnt out a couple of hours ago :yabbem: I guess I'll just have to get another. It's easy enough to replace.
I modified the tail cap to have a momentary switch. I tried to bore out the whole thing with a drill press the first time, but ended up splitting the tail cap in two. So, I got another solitaire and dremeled out a small area for the switch. It's a tiny switch from Radioshack, the same found on many of the green chinese modules, only with an long button. I had to glue some extensions to the button to make it stick out the back of the tail cap.
This laser measures ~0.5in by 3.5in, so it's quite small. Not bad for a first fully custom build
Pictures:
This is the modified tailcap:
You can see how tight for space it is:
Unfortunately I have no beamshots right now because the diode is dead... but I can assure you it works well
Shep
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